Resource: Electronic notetaking and using
MS OneNoteTM

Prepared by Helen Palmer (June 2011)

Da Vinci and Edison kept notebooks. They captured their thoughts,
observations and ideas. They wrote, they drew. They were
prolific!

Note-taking is a great habit for knowledge workers. Now we have
electronic tools for quality prolific note-taking; tools with smart
features to aid in flexible organising and discovering of the notes
taken. I adopted MS OneNote a few
years ago, and can't imagine life now
without electronic note-taking. Electronic note-taking is even more
integral to my life with the addition of a tablet laptop with
which I can draw and handwrite notes, when typing is undesirable or
limiting.

This resource explains some of my note-taking activities; features I
value in MS OneNote to support those activities; and rules-of-thumb for
how I have structured and organised my notes.

I have kept note books over the past 30 years. My notebooks
contained lists I of things I wanted, observed or planned to do;
quotes, songs or poetry I collected; reflections on about books I read,
movies I watched or presentations I attended; and other musings about
life as I saw it.

I now have 10+ electronic notebooks covering personal and professional
aspects of my life. Notebooks for my poetry, my home projects, my
university course, my vocational musings, my company development, my
client's projects, books I've read, collections of quotes I like. I've
even transcribed some of my handwritten notebooks into electronic form.

Note taking scenarios

When in meeting or seminar, I take notes. Sometimes tagging as
I
go. Sometimes tagging after the fact when I organise my notes,
and
supplement them with additional information. I tag to indicate
actions
I want to take, as well as highlight items for further research or
musing.

When reading books or watching videos, capturing the salient
points so
I can readily access them at any time. (I tend not to annotate
printed
books now, as my notes are then tied to the book, that lives on a
bookshelf in a single location that I can't always access, and that I
can't easily scan/search to discover some useful part.)

When managing professional projects and doing business analysis
work. I use a notebook per project as a single location for work
reference
material, plus my thoughts, my action lists, my research notes, my
in-development content that has yet to be formalised into a Word/Excel
template for publication and distribution to others.

When organising and 'managing' personal projects. e.g. Home
Garden. I
write, draw or type notes on-the-fly and when actively musing. I
collect reference material that supports my plans and decision
making.
I make action lists.

When collecting own reference collection of articles, extracts of
articles, emails, books, etc on things of professional or personal
interest. I copy the article to the relevant notebook, and tag it
according to what action I want to take, or what status I want to give
it.

In addition, I use a small paper notebook that I keep in my
handbag,
and the camera on my smartphone to capture items when my computer isn't
around or on. I then transfer these items to relevant notebooks.

B1. My top seven features (in no particular order)

Tag items with preset or custom-defined tags that can be
discovered in batches of same-tags.

Insert documents as 'printouts' that can be annotated on or
against: either
with typed text, or with tablet inking feature to literally highlight
words or
include handwritten notes. Depending on the original document format,
can search
for text within the inserted 'printout'.

Don't ever need to save - it's automatic. I can focus on the flow
of
what I'm writing and typing without having to interrupt myself to
do the Save action. Particularly useful when taking notes in
meetings, and the flow of note-taking needs to keep pace with the flow
of the meeting/session.

A single notebook tool that captures note taking regardless of
whether it's personal or professional content. Only need to learn
one tool (and its features) and can apply the tool in
multiple scenarios for all note-taking needs.

Place text easily on any part of the page, to add ancillary notes
to other content. Text is in boxes that can be dragged around and
formatted separately from text in other boxes. I don't have to confirm
to linear sequential layout.

Set-up notebooks to be shared with another computer, and when
networked to other computer - there is automatic synchronisation in
both directions to update notebooks. For me, this supports
mobility with notebooks on laptop, and provides security with an
automatic duplicate copy managed on main desktop computer.

Flexible organisation with multiple notebooks, which have
sections or section groups, which have time-stamped pages (can even
backdate the time stamp if it's important).

B2. Other features of value (in no particular order)

Cut-n-paste content from other locations (i.e. web page, inside
MS Word document), and the content gets pasted (automatically) with the
URL of the source location.

Tag items with a special tag 'To Do' that gets treated in special
way in search results, (i.e. show unchecked items only) and can
interact with the search results list to a) change the status of the
tag; and to b) link back to the source location of the tag for
associated/contextual information. 'To Do' items can also be
linked into MS Outlook's task feature.

Create a summary page of tagged search results

Insert audio file, play it and take notes, and notes are
time-tagged to the time when the note was taken in listening to the
audio file

Hide menus to get maximum screen space for reading and writing

Export a page or set of pages to PDF or MS Word to share with
others

Share a notebook with other people

Add-ins in Internet Explorer, MS Outlook, etc, where items from
web or email can be directly sent to OneNote for filing.

Open up a note-taking page without need to open the full
application.

Have note page open on screen, and on top of other applications
including another OneNote page to facilitate reading/viewing from one
place and note-taking in another place.

Create note without need to place it in the location where it
will/should be filed. (Unfiled Notes)

Use as much page space as I want - don't have to conform to a A4
space
or fixed orientation.

Search across all notebooks or parts of notebooks for single
words, and get a list of search results that give useful context to the
location of the word (i.e. Title of note page, time-stamp of page,
Title of section where page is located)

I have a special notebook called 'Knowledge Development' which is a
collection of various knowledge areas in which I am developing and
acquiring knowledge. Each Section Group, has the same Section headings:
Articles+References, Samples, R&D for me (includes my own ideas).